


Beach day

by Zoya113



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, Found Family Dynamics, Hurt and comfort, really OOC tbh!! Sorry!!, tw almost drowning, tw body insecurities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 03:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19939249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Everyone tries to convince Emma to swim but she’s insecure about her scar





	Beach day

**Author's Note:**

> Didn’t upload for a while there & came back w this intensely ooc mess but on the other hand if u aren’t on the Paul & Melissa sibling dynamic ur missing out

“You don’t wanna swim?” Paul asked, wading down to his knees in the water.   
“Not really,” Emma drew lines in the sand with her fingertip. “It’s not that hot.”   
“You always struck me as a beach person, I guess not?” Paul took a few more slow steps into the water until it was up to his hips.  
Emma shrugged. “It’s not that. It’s just not hot enough and you know, if I get wet my hair will take forever to dry and I’ll get tired and I’ve just got stuff to do tonight.”  
“The water isn’t bad, Em,” Melissa spoke up from where she had already swam out to.   
“Hey, we didn’t invite you along for you to not swim!” Bill grinned, although he hadn’t gotten into the water himself.   
Emma forced a smile back. “Hey, you have to get into the water before you can talk to me like that.”  
“We can get in together if you want,” Charlotte offered, only just dipping her toes into the water. “I never liked the beach as a girl, I was too scared of what was under the water. What about you?”   
“Oh, I used to come to the beach all the time. Jane and I used to try to swim across to Clivesdale but we always got too tired.”   
Charlotte chuckled. “Oh those were the days.”   
And for a moment they left her alone. No more questions asked.  
She stretched her legs out in front of her until her toes were just touching the water and examined the bandages on her thigh.   
Her fingers skimmed the top of the bandage, trying not to think about what was underneath.   
The first time Emma had dared leave the house without her bandages on, Nora had given her a short yet polite warning, something like ‘don’t show that off to the customers, you’ll scare them away.’ At the end of her shift when Zoey decided to show up she looked at it with an expression Emma couldn’t read - either shock or surprise, maybe even disgust.   
“Sorry for crashing the helicopter,” Zoey had started. “But maybe you shouldn’t have kicked the gun out of my hand.”  
Emma wasn’t even going to try with that debate. She bandaged it back up for her next shift and with such a hectic work schedule she had never gotten around to unwrapping it again.   
Insecure wasn’t the first word that came to her mind but she always found herself putting off changing the bandages, not even daring to take them off around anyone, let alone Paul.   
It was an ugly looking scar, Emma had come to admit that. Getting in the water meant taking off the bandages, so the simple solution was to just not get in the water.   
She watched Paul wade deeper into the water as Melissa taunted him, always swimming just out of his reach.   
Emma had to confess that the water looked cool, and the sun was beating down especially hot today. Her skin was already starting to burn, she gave a bothered sigh.   
“Aren’t you hot?” Ted asked as he swam up by the shore.   
“Nah,” Emma mumbled, squinting to keep the sun out of her eyes. “Just a little tired.”   
“You look like shit.”   
Emma nodded, “thanks Ted.”  
“Do you not want to swim?” He climbed out of the water onto the shore, dripping wet. He shook his hands, spraying drops of water onto Emma’s face.   
“Hey,” She grunted but didn’t attempt to stop him.   
“You need to cool off. We came to the beach for a reason. You’re gonna get sunburnt. Have you had any water? You can’t just sit in the sun all day.”  
“So what? Piss off.”  
“Is it your leg?” Ted raised an eyebrow, catching Emma off guard, she reached to cover up the bandages instinctively.  
“Wh-“  
“Is it hurting? Is that stopping you from swimming?”   
“Oh!” Emma shook her head. “No, I just think it’d be a waste of time, getting dry and getting exhausted and getting sand everywhere’s just not worth it.”   
“Can you swim?” Ted interjected.   
Emma went wide eyed. “What sort of a question is that? Of course I can swim!”   
“Perfect.” Without waiting, Ted scooped her up off the sand and marched back down into the water.   
“Hey! Put me back down, bitch!”   
Emma’s yelling managed to attract everyone else’s attention.   
Some of them laughed innocently, not keying into the distress she was in.   
“You should cool down, Em,” Paul suggested, giving up chasing Melissa to swim over to greet her.  
“Ted if you drop me in the water right now I’ll fucking kill you,” Emma threatened, scrambling out of Ted’s hands and onto his back to avoid getting in the water.   
“Hey Paul? Do you want to get your feral girlfriend off my head or what?” Ted asked after a moment of Emma clambering for space.   
“Yeah Em, get off Ted,” Paul laughed. “You can ride on my shoulders if you want,” he offered.   
Melissa swam up curiously, wrapping her arms around Paul’s shoulder to buoy herself. “Are we playing chicken?”   
“No, no Melissa, Ted’s being a fucking dick!” Emma shouted.   
Ted, who had been rather calm throughout the whole ordeal finally gave in. “Alright, well sorry that I don’t want you getting heatstroke but it’s just for your own good!” He pulled Emma off his shoulders, plunging her into the water.   
Emma didn’t have time to be surprised as she was dunked underwater. She felt her bandages give way the second she hit the water, and everything was too murky to see.   
Her brain stopped working - she was so deadset on keeping her bandages on that now they were gone she didn’t know what to do next. There was no way she could come back up but she wasn’t just going to drown.   
She didn’t have to work it out in the end though, Paul reached underwater and dragged her back up to the surface.   
She coughed, gasping for air.   
“In my defence, she told me she could swim,” Ted tried to explain.   
“But wow. You can really hold your breath Em,” Melissa commented, peering over Paul’s shoulder.   
“Yeah, ugh,” Emma coughed, wiping her eyes.   
Paul held her gently in his arms, bridal style with his fingers hovering carefully over her scar. “Aw, oh no,” he started.   
Emma knew that was it, he was going to make some comment on how awful it was looking, she began cycling through her mind for excuses and explanations but she didn’t need to find one.   
“Your bandages came off. We’ll have to put on some new ones at home.” He hoisted her leg out of the water slightly so he could look at her thigh clearer and Emma clenched her teeth as he showed off the scar. She wasn’t in the mood for any unwarranted comments on how bad it looked.   
“It’s actually healed up a lot better than I thought, though!” Paul exclaimed hopefully.   
“Yeah, that’s a pretty cool scar,” Melissa commented with a smile. “Badass. Makes you look like you could kill a man.”   
“Wow,” Ted added. “Yeah, pretty neat. Was that from the rebar? Shitty experience but pretty cool scar.”  
“Uh, you’re kidding,” Emma snorted. “It’s an eyesore.” She gave it a quick glance, it wasn’t as awful as she remembered it looking.   
“No way!” Paul corrected her, “it’s really cool babe! I’m glad it’s turned out alright!” He kissed her forehead lightly. “You don’t have to hide it, it’s not a problem at all.”  
Emma laughed, her sunburn probably hiding her blush. “I’m not allowed to keep it out anyways, Nora says it scares away customers.”   
“Oh bullshit,” Ted snorted.   
“What does she mean by that!” Paul snapped.   
“Exactly, you’re like 4 foot, you can’t be scary no matter how many scars you’ve got,” Ted stated matter-of-factly. “You only scare people when you almost drown like that.”   
“What!?” Emma swung out her hand to splash water at Ted.   
Melissa chuckled. “For what it’s worth, we think you’re pretty scary,” she joked.  
“Thank you Melissa, just what I like to hear,” Emma crossed her arms.  
“Oh but uh, sorry for ruining your beach day by almost drowning,” she added. “I forgot what was happening for a second.”   
“Do you want me to take you back to the shore?” Paul offered.  
Emma glanced down at her scar again, just to make sure it really wasn’t that bad. “I think I’ll swim for a little bit”

**Author's Note:**

> This was realLy dumb lmao I only wrote it bc I wanted to write it and so I did


End file.
